This week, several Environmental Science and Policy graduate students and their faculty and staff mentors are presenting research at the 98th annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America in Minneapolis.

Student Cindy Burtley’s paper, “Spatiotemporal variation of tree growth in a northern hardwood forest,” reports the effect of micro-topography and species identity on four years of tree growth at the Wabikon Forest Dynamics Plot. Another grad student, Nick Walton, and former student and current Cofrin Center for Biodiversity staff member Erin Giese are presenting results from a large-scale collaborative project. Their work, “How do different taxa respond to landscape stressors in Great Lakes coastal wetlands?” examines how diverse taxa including birds, diatoms, fish, invertebrates, and vascular plants respond uniquely to human-induced changes to the ecosystem. The students’ faculty advisers are Natural and Applied Science Profs. Amy Wolf and Bob Howe.